Tomorrow, June 22, 2023, will be the 76th birthday of Howard Kaylan, though
everyone knew him as Eddie.
Kaylan, a native New Yorker, first rose to fame in the mid sixties band The
Turtles. First touted as a 'folk-rock group (their first hit was a
Bob Dylan song), The Turtles today are best known for their schlock-rock juggernaut "Happy
Together."
A book I haven't read
So it was surprising to me -- and I assume millions of Frank Zappa fans across
God's gray Earth -- when Kaylan and fellow Turtles singer Mark Volman turned
up in 1970 as the new frontmen for The Mothers of Invention.
And in their new band Kaylan & Volman were christened "The Phlorescent
Leech & Eddie," later shortened to "Flo & Eddie."
According to Wikipedia -- and I cringe when I write those words -- Kaylan originally was The
Phlorescent Leech.
But he and Volman "were appalled to learn that the printer
had mistakenly printed the duo's stage names in the wrong order above their
photograph. ... The label refused to reprint the cover, saying that it would
cost too much money. Thus, Kaylan and Volman decided to professionally swap
stage names."
(Wikipedia attributes this anecdote to Kaylan's 2013 autobiography
Shell Shocked. I haven't read it, so I can't verify it. It might be
true but it's
always good to be skeptical of Wikipedia
as a sole source.)
Besides their solo work and their efforts with Zappa and The Turtles, Kaylan
and Volman also contributed background vocals to an impressive array of
musical acts, a few examples being T. Rex (on "Get it On"); Bruce Springsteen
"Hungry Heart"); and a couple of songs on The Ramones' Mondo Bizarro.
But let's look at some tunes where Flo and Eddie -- whichever is which -- are out
front:
Here's a tune, from Zappa's 200 Motels, that I believe is one of the best
non-comedy tracks from Zappa's Flo-and-Eddie period.
"I'm coming over shortly because I am a portly...":
"WE ARE NOT GROUPIES!":
Here are Flo & Eddie riffing on an old classic. Ethel Merman would be
proud:
Finally, here are the boys singing a Beach Boys song with one of their idols they mentioned in the
above version of The Mothers' groupie routine:
Sunday, June 18, 2023 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Papa Was A Steel-Headed Man by Robbie Fulks
I Got Ants In My Pants by James Brown
Burnin' Hell by The Fleshtones
Hot Tamale Baby by Buckwheat Zydeco
Sunday You Need Love by Oblivians
Sixty Minute Man by Jerry Lee Lewis
Papa Won't Leave You, Henry by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Sunday, June 11 was the 83rd birthday of one Joseph DiNicola, who was born
in Passaic, New Jersey. You probably aren't familiar with that name, but
as a young man in his 20s, DiNicola was reborn as Joey Dee, who helped
entice the world to do the Twist.
Happy birthday, Twist King!
And soon after Joey Dee and The Starliters released "The Peppermint
Twist," a little bitty boy in Oklahoma City, discovering the joys of AM
radio, (that would be me) came to believe that Joey's stomping grounds,
the Peppermint Mint Lounge, 128 West 45th Street in New York City -- which
later in life I learned was a tiny dump of a gay bar operated by Genovese
crime family captain Matty "The Horse" Ianniello -- had to be the coolest
place on Earth.
And apparently I wasn't alone.
In October 2007, James Wolcott wrote inVanity Fairof the Peppermint Lounge:
Like CBGB's in the 70s, the Peppermint Lounge was an inauspicious
dump destined to become a pop landmark. "Adjoined to the Knickerbocker
Hotel just off Times Square, the Lounge was essentially a gay hustler
joint, frequented by sailors, lowlifes and street toughs in leather
jackets [early kin of the Ramones!]" ...
The Peppermint Lounge! You know about the Peppermint Lounge. One week
October, 1961, a few socialites, riding hard under the crop of a
couple of New York columnists, discovered the Peppermint Lounge and by
next week all of Jet Set New York was discovering the Twist, after the
manner of the first 900 decorators who ever laid eyes on an African
mask. Greta Garbo, Elsa Maxwell, Countess Bernadotte, Noel Coward,
Tennessee Williams, and the Duke of Bedford—everybody was there, and
the hindmost were laying fives, tens, and twenty-dollar bills on cops,
doormen and a couple of sets of maitre d's to get within sight of the
bandstand and a dance floor the size of somebody's kitchen.
Wolcott hilariously documents the reactions of the squares to the
Peppermint scene:
A disapproving Arthur Gelb of The New York Times, descending like an anthropologist into the amoebic bedlam of the
Peppermint Lounge, wrote of the club's chic-y clientele, "Cafe society
has not gone slumming with such energy since its forays into Harlem in
the Twenties."
He quoted Gay Telese in the New York Times -- seems like the
Gray Lady didn't dig the Twist -- saying:
Dee's booking was a rude surprise to the Met's then director, James
J. Rorimer, who wigged out when he saw photographers hastening to
photograph the guests doing the Twist in the shrine of Rembrandt and
Cezanne... Apparently no one had thought it necessary to inform Mr.
Rorimer that the Dee troupe, which has played for charity balls this
month at the Plaza Hotel and the Four Seasons restaurant, as well as
for Mayor Wagner's Victory Ball at the Astor Hotel, had been invited
to play.
But I part ways with Wolcott when he describes Joey Dee. "The
Lounge's house band was Joey Dee and the Starlighters, whose `Peppermint
Twist' topped the charts despite yappy vocals and cretinous lyrics that
can still produce cavities today ..."
I mean fuck that guy!
During various points in the heyday of The Starliters, the group included
one
James Marshall Hendrix as well as Joe Pesci (!) One of the mainstays of The Starliters was singer David Brigati, brother
of Eddie Brigati, who would go on to fame as a singer in The Young
Rascals. Other Young Rascals also played with the Starliters.
The Peppermint Lounge closed after it lost its liquor license in 1965. The
state yanked the license because Thomas C. Kelly, who was listed as the
sole owner and stockholder of the Peppermint, had been arrested for
possessing obscene materials -- "not merely pornographic or obscene, they
are unadulterated filth of the lowest nature"
according to court documents.
The club opened and reopened several times, sometimes under different
names.
The final incarnation of the Peppermint moved to 5th Avenue in 1982. It
closed in 1985, two years after The Cramps recorded their live album
Smell of Female there. The original building on West 45th Street
was unsentimentally demolished in the mid-1980s.
Ianniello controlled several gay bars in New York -- including the
Stonewall Inn
-- and later went on to control the Times Square sex trade in the 1970s.
He was convicted in 1986 on charges of extorting protection money from bar
owners (including
the Peppermint's legit creditors), pornography peddlers, and topless dancers. He also was convicted on
charges of bid rigging in construction, skimming union dues.
"The Horse" was the son of the owner of Umberto’s Clam House in Little
Italy. He reportedly was working there on the April 1972 night Joe Gallo was gunned down while celebrating his birthday with his family there. (Ianniello never was implicated in that murder.)
He died in 2012 at the age of 92, but later was immortalized by actor Garry Pastore as a
character who popped up in seven episodes of in the HBO series The Deuce, which was about the sleazy Time
Square sex trade scene of the '70s and early '80s.
Joey Dee & The Starliters, who'd hitched their star to a dance
craze, sank beneath our wisdom like a stone after Twist fever died down.
But Joey Dee & The Starliters, The Peppermint Lounge and the Twist all left a crazy mark -- or, more precisely, a twisted mark -- on the world of rock. 'n' roll. And though Chubby Checker, with the help of America's phoniest teenager Dick Clark, robbed Hank Ballard to become the national face of The Twist, for me, Chubby can't hold a peppermint candle to Joey Dee.
Here's Joey and the boys doing their biggest hit, which was produced by
Henry Glover, who previously had worked with country, rockabilly and
R&B groups on King Records. Glover teamed up with Mr. Dee and The Starliters at Morris
Levy's Roulette label (Levy, of course, having
many things in common with Matty the Horse, including Genovese ties):
Here's the follow-up song, "Hey, Let's Twist," which also was the title of a quickie movie about Joey and the twist phenomenon (and you can find the actual
movie
HERE):
Joey attempted to popularize another new teen dance, the mashed potatoes with
this tune. It always makes me hungry for hot pastrami:
And here's Joey's ode to a certain BBW who won his heart:
Finally here's a little Twistory from Ronny Elliott:
Sunday, June 11, 2023 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
That's what Eugene Dixon, better known as Gene Chandler, proclaimed in his
1962 hit "Duke of Earl."
You gotta admire the guy's regal confidence: "As I walk through the world nothing
can stop the Duke of Earl ..."
And that confidence is contagious.
Sometimes I sing that verse on my afternoon walks as I survey my own Dukedom.
Back in the early '60s "Duke of Earl" was the kind of song that was bound to
inspire answer songs. Chandler himself might have been the first, quickly
releasing "Walk On With the Duke" as a follow-up just a few months later. Of
course it wasn't nearly as successful as the original "Duke."
On the original song, Chandler told his girlfriend, "And when I hold you
/You'll be my Duchess, Duchess of Earl/ We'll walk through my dukedom /And a
paradise we will share ..."
Apparently Bobbie Smith of the Dream Girls wanted to take the Duke up on this
offer:
However, a group called The Pearlettes begged to differ over who was the true Dutchess of Earl:
Meanwhile, Dorothy Berry -- who was married to Richard Berry (the "Louie Louie" composer, not the former mayor of Albuquerque) claimed to be "The Girl Who Stopped the Duke of Earl." I sense a doowop catfight in the air!
However, a male group called The Upfronts claim that they are the ones who stopped the Duke of Earl -- perhaps by including riffs from The Monotones' "Book of Love" as well as the original "Duke".
Somehow not even the Duke of Prunes," (which appeared on The Mothers of
Invention's second album, Absolutely Free) could stop the Duke
of Earl:
